


Hammer Time: Can't Touch This (no, seriously, don't touch that!)

by MagicaDraconia16



Series: 2020 Bingos [18]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alien Technology, Because Hammer Is A Dick, Gen, Humor, Juice pops, Justin Hammer is a dick, Kid Tony Stark, Mentor/Protégé, One Unsavoury Reference, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel, Unreliable Narrator, it bears repeating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26046532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicaDraconia16/pseuds/MagicaDraconia16
Summary: After returning from the Snap and having a hard time getting his fortune back, Justin Hammer invents a new gun that willblow everyone's socks off.Unfortunately, it blows him into 1976 first. Perhaps he shouldn't have used some of that leftover alien tech to make it...
Relationships: Edwin Jarvis & Tony Stark, Justin Hammer & Tony Stark
Series: 2020 Bingos [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634290
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23
Collections: Tony Stark Flash Bingo





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First off, Hammer is a dick. So there's one small reference that almost implies paedophilia, because - I repeat - Hammer is a dick. 
> 
> Having said that... other parts of this story were surprisingly fun to write. 
> 
> This is written for the _August_ **Tony Stark Flash Bingo** , and fulfills 4 prompts. I'd hoped to squeeze the 5th one in there, too, but alas, it didn't fit. 
> 
> Card Number: #18  
> Square Filled: Justin Hammer (ch1) | Time Travel (ch2) | Juice Pops (ch3) | Mentor (ch4)  
> Ship/Main Pairing: Edwin Jarvis & Tony Stark, Justin Hammer & Tony Stark  
> Rating: T  
> Major Tags: Humor, time travel, Justin Hammer, implied reference to paedophilia  
> Summary: As above

Biting his tongue as he screwed in the last fiddly little pin, Justin Hammer sat back and exhaled once it was safely in position, grinning down at the contraption. It felt _so good_ to be back in business – things had been a little rough there, if he were honest, after the whole… Snap… thing that had happened. Apparently, he’d been one of the Snapped, as people were calling them.

It had felt as if he’d blinked and opened his eyes five years later to a very different world. He’d had to scramble to get a lot of his fortune back, although he counted himself lucky that at least they’d only _frozen_ his assets; they could have taken everything and refused to give it back. Justin knew how governments worked, yes, he did. Hadn’t he bribed enough officials over the years?

Thankfully, more lost and confused people than anyone was really prepared to cope with reappearing abruptly meant more riots, as those people discovered that their homes, their livelihoods, their _families_ had either disappeared, been reassigned, or were now married to someone else with three extraneous kids.

Which meant that security forces needed better ways of stopping riots.

Which meant they needed _weapons_.

And since Stark Industries was no longer in the weapons-making business – and since apparently Stark himself had somehow died while everyone else was returning back to life – then it meant the field was free and clear for Justin himself.

Not that he _needed_ the field to be free and clear, oh no, but it helped. Just a little. A _smidge_.

Anyways, his coffers were filling up nicely again. His supplies of weapons had been gutted for resources after the Snap, but there’d been a whole lot of alien tech just lying around out near where the Avengers compound _used_ to be, and since most of them appeared to be off celebrating new life – or mourning Stark’s and Captain America’s deaths; and what on earth had happened to _that_ guy? – then no-one had prevented Justin from doing a little… _souvenir hunting_.

Which neatly led his thoughts back to… the gun he’d just finished making. Justin couldn’t stop grinning at it. It was just so _streamlined_ and _edgy_. Once people learnt what it could do – once, if he was honest, _he’d_ learnt what it could do – then they’d be ordering _thousands_ of them, and Hammer Industries would be back in business.

Justin pushed his chair back from the table he’d been hunched over for the better part of several hours and boosted himself upright, stretching and twisting his torso until his spine popped. He let out a sigh of relief as the pressure eased. Hopefully this little gizmo would be easily mass-machine-made, because otherwise trying to find enough people to hand-make it would be a _bitch_.

“See you in a bit, my little money-maker,” Justin cooed down at the gun, patting it in farewell. “Daddy’s going to go and order lunch now from the finest restaurant this area has to offer.”

He’d barely taken two steps away from the table before a small _click_ and an ominous whining sound made him spin back around. His mouth fell open in horror. Parts of the gun were now glowing, a bright impossible blue that sort of reminded Justin of something, although he couldn’t think what.

“No, no, _no, NO!_ ” he gibbered, and dove back towards the table, his hands reaching for the gun that was going to earn him _millions_.

His fingertip brushed it just as the whine reached its peak and it exploded, with a noise that was somehow both loud and silent and a wash of bright blue light.

When everything settled again, the space was empty.


	2. Chapter 2

Panting, Justin frantically patted himself down. Head, arms, torso, legs and the most important body part… yep, he was all there. _Phew!_ Now, if only that explosion hadn’t damaged the gun – or his workspace – too badly…

Abruptly, he realised that something felt very wrong. Not in himself, no, but _outside_ of himself.

He was getting rained on.

Spluttering out a mouthful of water, Justin hastily brought a hand up to shield his face as he finally opened his eyes. He _was_ getting rained on! Mainly because he was lying on his back in the middle of a field somewhere. He frowned as he gingerly patted the ground beside himself.

Correction: he was lying on his back in the middle of a _muddy_ field.

“Oh, man, and I just had this suit _dry-cleaned_ ,” he groaned. He forced himself first into a sitting position and then onto his feet, but it was clearly too late. The suit felt much heavier than it should; he’d obviously been out in the wet for way too long.

Which… why _was_ he out in the wet?

Still frowning, although now in puzzlement, Justin did a slow circle to really take in his surroundings. He’d been in an office just seconds ago, so how had he ended up in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere? The last thing he remembered was…

“The gun!” he exclaimed, and he spun in another circle, more frantically this time, looking for the contraption he’d been working on. There was absolutely no sign of it. Justin had to bite back the strong urge to cry. “That was going to earn me _millions_ ,” he sighed, slapping his hands against his legs in frustration. “And now I’ve got to start all over again. _Ugh!_ ”

First though, he had to get himself home and out of this disgusting suit. He gingerly pinched his shirt and pulled it away from his skin. He couldn’t help but pull a face at the sensation. It was all _wet_ and _muddy_ and _gross_. Hopefully one of his employees would be somewhere close by with a car, because he didn’t think any cab would agree to take him looking like this. Cab drivers tended to be very particular about the state of people getting into their car. As if they weren’t paid enough to get it cleaned.

Sighing, Justin reached into the inner pocket in his suit jacket for his phone. He just hoped _it_ hadn’t become too waterlogged, otherwise goodness knows how far he’d have to trek before he found somewhere with a phone. And these shoes were the finest Italian leather. They were _not_ made for splashing through muddy grass. Or even long walks on perfectly flat surfaces, if Justin were honest.

Unfortunately, his grasping fingers met with empty space. Frowning _again_ – he was going to end up with wrinkles if he wasn’t careful – Justin checked the pocket yet again, and then began patting down the rest of himself, despite the fact that the inner suit jacket was the only pocket his entire suit had.

There was still no cell phone.

He gave the ground another thorough once-over, but just as there was no exploding gun in his vicinity, there was no phone, either.

“Well, dang,” he sighed, realising that he was going to have to do some trekking after all. “That phone cost me a _half a million dollars_ to make!” he groused to himself as he oriented himself towards the nearest gate. “And it gets lost at the least little explosion? _Bah!_ ”

The only saving grace was that the field was empty. Which meant that Justin didn’t have to worry about where he was putting his very expensive Italian loafers. Mud was quite bad enough without any other sorts of… _mud_.

By the time he reached the field gate, Justin was heartily cursing the stupid gun that had gotten him into this mess. And the stupid alien tech _inside_ the stupid gun that had gotten him into this mess. And then, to top everything off, not only was the gate so securely padlocked that he had to _climb over it_ , thereby ripping his suit trousers from knee to hem when he got caught on a snag in the wood, but he dropped down onto what he _thought_ was a grassy verge, only to discover that it was actually just grass floating on top of a _very full_ drainage ditch, and he landed calf deep in a puddle.

“Oh, _come on_!” he bellowed in frustration as he splashed out of the ditch. “I’d just _bought_ this suit, damn it!”

A small sound cut through his temper, and Justin’s head shot up to discover a small boy standing in the middle of the road, staring at him in wide-mouthed astonishment.

“What are you looking at?” he snapped, tugging fruitlessly on the hem of his jacket as though that would get rid of the mud and the water.

“D-do you need some help?” the boy asked, tentatively. “My house is at the end of this road. I’m sure Jarvis could find you another suit to wear.”

It took Justin less than a minute to consider this. “Fine,” he said, ungraciously. “I doubt this Jarvis of yours has anything even _close_ to my usual standards, but where there’s a house, there’s a phone, right?”

The boy nodded. “Sure, we’ve got a phone,” he agreed. “We’ve got several! And I’m sure Jarvis can find one of Howard’s cast-offs for you.”

_Cast-off?!_ Justin spluttered indignantly, but the boy was already turning back down the road and thus ignored him. Justin fumed at the sheer _nerve_ of the boy – didn’t he know a rich man when he saw one? Then again, if he lived out in the country like this, maybe he didn’t. Justin would let it go; _this_ time – but began trudging after him.

The boy was obviously used to being on his own, as he chattered away at a mile a minute but didn’t seem to expect Justin to answer him. Which was a good thing, because most of what he said went right over Justin’s head.

“So what’s your name, little fella?” he interrupted, finally.

“Tony,” the boy replied, giving Justin a strange look over his shoulder. “Tony Stark.”

Justin came to a dead stop in the middle of the road. “I-I’m sorry, I must have misheard you,” he stammered. “Could you repeat that? You’re _who_ now?”

The boy was definitely giving Justin an odd look now. “Tony Stark,” he repeated, slower, as if he thought Justin must not have understood him.

“But—” Justin began. _Tony Stark is dead,_ he wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. Not only that, Tony Stark had been in his fifties when he’d died; this little boy couldn’t be more than six at the very most. So either this was Stark’s son – and as far as Justin was aware, Stark hadn’t had any children six years ago – or… “Year is it?” Justin squeaked out.

“What?” The boy – _Tony_ – was squinting at him now. “Have you got something wrong with you, mister?” Then he winced. “Oops, Jarvis says I shouldn’t say things like that,” he admitted, scuffing the toe of one shoe across the road.

“Just… please. Tell me what year it is?” begged Justin.

Tony instantly brightened. “Ooh, are you a time traveller?” he asked, gleefully. “It’s 1976. What year did you come from? Ha, I _told_ Jarvis they’d manage to fix the problem someday in the future! Can everyone do it?”

1976. _Holy shit! I’ve gone back in time!_ Justin promptly sat down in the middle of the road, uncaring of anything else he might get on his suit. He felt rather close to passing out, actually.

So he did.


	3. Chapter 3

His awakening this time was much more comfortable than it had been the previous time. For one, he wasn’t lying on muddy grass and two, neither was he still lying in the middle of the road.

“I think he’s waking up, Jarvis!” he heard a small voice say.

“I think you might be right, Master Tony,” a second, older, voice replied.

_Tony!_ Justin felt a jolt so strong that he almost jerked himself right off of whatever it was he was lying on, and the other two people made startled noises of alarm. Justin wasn’t really worried about _them_ , though. He was rather more concerned with the fact that he’d apparently been transported over forty years back in time.

Either that, or he was suffering from one _hell_ of a delusion.

“Sir?” the second voice said, and it took Justin a moment to realise that it was addressing _him_. “Sir, are you alright?”

Prising his eyes open, Justin stared up at the man who was bending cautiously over him. The man looked to be somewhere in his late sixties, but he held himself like a younger man, not bent and frail.

“I—” Justin croaked.

“Here.” The man helped him to sit semi-upright and then offered him a glass half-full of water. “My name is Jarvis,” he said as Justin cautiously sipped at the water. “Master Tony says he discovered you coming out of one of our fallow fields, in a rather… bedraggled state, and whilst he was bringing you here for assistance, you collapsed in the road. I couldn’t find anything amiss, but is there an underlying medication condition we need to be aware of?”

Justin had the abrupt urge to let out a hysterical giggle. “Well, I don’t know, does _time travel_ count as a medical condition?” he asked.

Jarvis frowned at him, whilst Tony leapt around excitedly, tugging on Jarvis’ arm. “See, Jarvis, see!” he exclaimed. “I _told_ you he time travelled!”

Jarvis transferred the frown to Tony, although it softened considerably. “That’s enough of that now, Master Tony,” he said, reprovingly. “How about you leave our guest to me and go and see what Ana might have for you?”

“Juice pops!” Tony screeched, and scrambled towards the door of the room that Justin now realised must be a guest bedroom or a parlour of some sort. The boy abruptly skidded to a halt and came racing back. “Don’t explain anything until I get back!” he demanded of Justin, then turned and dashed off again, this time vanishing from the room.

“My apologies,” Jarvis said once the boy was gone. “Master Tony tends to get very excitable when it comes to things like that, like many small boys. Despite the fact that he’s _very_ smart for his age, he doesn’t quite understand yet that some things simply aren’t real.”

Justin finished off his water in a big gulp. “It’s alright,” he assured the other man. “Hey, I wouldn’t believe me either if I were you!” He spread his hands in a shrug and shook his head. “But I’m sure it won’t be too long until I can get out of your hair. There’s gotta be a workshop around here somewhere, right? Tools and equipment and all that jazz?”

Jarvis stiffened, and his expression froze. “Master Stark does indeed have a workshop, but it is secured by a wide range of features that you have no hope of getting past,” he said. “Nor will _I_ let you past. Whatever scheme you’re here for, that cockamamie nonsense will not give you success.”

Justin winced as he realised just how his words would have sounded. “No, no, no, you’ve got me all wrong,” he protested. “I honestly don’t care about whatever Howard Stark might be working on right now, because once I manage to get myself home, then it’s obsolete again anyway.”

That… did not help his cause either. Jarvis stiffened even more. “Well, then,” the man said, in _very_ icy tones that caused Justin to shiver. “I’m sure we won’t keep you long, if your surroundings are so objectionably… _obsolete_ , to you.” He strode for the door, not daring to slam it shut as he obviously wanted to, but instead shutting it firmly enough that he might as well have slammed it anyway.

Justin sighed and slumped back against the pillows. “That went well,” he murmured to himself.

* * *

“Okay, mister, I’m back now!” Tony announced a short time later as he barged into the room. He scrambled up onto the bed and sat himself down cross-legged by Justin’s feet. A popsicle obviously made of fruit juice was clutched tightly in one hand and he began determinedly sucking on it as he stared at Justin.

“What? What do you want?” Justin demanded, scowling at the boy. He’d been trying to think of a way out of here, but he kept getting stuck on the fact that the alien tech he’d used _didn’t exist here yet_. “I got nothing for ya, kid, now beat it!” He thrust a thumb in the direction of the door.

“Bu’ ‘oove go’ ‘o ‘ell me how you go’ here!” Tony protested around a mouthful of popsicle. Justin grimaced as juice ran down the iced treat and began dripping off of Tony’s little fist. “Oops,” he said and raised his hand to catch the drips with his tongue. Justin grimaced again. In all the years since he was one, he’d forgotten just how _messy_ young boys could be.

Under the weight of Tony’s expectant stare, Justin finally caved. “I can’t, alright?” he admitted. “I don’t even know _how_ I got here. I had just finished putting together a new gun that was going to absolutely _blow_ the government’s _socks_ off and then… I was in that field.”

Tony’s shoulders slumped for a moment, but then he perked up again. “You build guns too?” he asked, and oh, right, Howard Stark had supposedly started his son off young, hadn’t he? Said boy was enthusiastically sucking his juice pop again. “Wha’ kin’?” he asked.

Justin had to turn his eyes away before he could answer. He’d heard _way too much_ about the adult Tony’s… abilities, and it was just a _little_ disconcerting to see the younger version evidently practicing.

“Military guns,” he said eventually, when the silence became too awkward. “Mostly, the… kind that I don’t want to tell you about right now,” he realised, mid-sentence. He was in the past; he didn’t want to give a young Tony Stark his _ideas_!

The boy sighed and slumped again, and slurped at his juice pop. He reached the end of it, and bit it off the stick with a crunching noise that, frankly, creeped Justin out. Tony frowned at the now empty stick, then turned a considering gaze on Justin. “Hey, do you want a juice pop?” he asked. “You probably want one, right?” He scrambled off the bed before Justin could answer yay or nay; no doubt eager to procure another one for himself under the guise of sharing with Justin.

_Meh_ , Justin shrugged to the empty room. _I could go for a juice pop…_


	4. Chapter 4

_1980_

“No, no, no, _no_ ,” Justin protested. “You need to have something _flashy_. People aren’t gonna want to buy anything from you if it isn’t flashy!”

Tony frowned at him. “But surely people want something that _works_ rather than something that just… dazzles them,” he objected in return. “Otherwise what’s the point in buying stuff if it just breaks a few days later? Then they have to go buy another one.”

“Which in turn makes you more money,” Justin pointed out. “You’re an unknown seller, kiddo; you have to _make_ people want to buy your stuff. And to do that—” He spread out his hands in a ‘there you have it’ gesture. “—it needs to _flash_!”

Growling in exasperation, Tony turned back to his blueprints. He was ten years old now; Justin hadn’t managed to find a way to reverse what that stupid gun had done to him. His only hope – if he didn’t want to have to live through all those years again until aliens attacked – was that he’d described it well enough that the young genius could create it for him.

Although it turned out they needed some extra equipment, first. Equipment that hadn’t been invented yet. Justin had seriously considered simply making it himself but it turned out that he didn’t quite understand it all as well as he’d thought he did. The first attempt had been a disaster, and after the third prototype had exploded and created a hole big enough to be yet another pond in the Stark mansion back yard, both Jarvis and Howard had put a stop to it.

So Justin had decided a better use of his time was to mentor young Stark. After all, he might be better tabloid fodder, but Justin was the better businessman. Hadn’t Stark proved that he didn’t have a head for business when he made that assistant of his into CEO? (Shame he couldn’t remember her name right now – hadn’t she married Stark? Had his kid, or something? – but she’d had a _stunning_ pair of legs.)

“Jarvis says that just because something’s flashy, doesn’t mean that there’s any substance to it,” Tony said now, jerking Justin’s attention back to him. The kid was actually sticking his bottom lip out in a pout, as if he were still the snotty nosed six-year-old that had stumbled across a time traveller. “Once word gets out that my stuff is _good_ and that it works _really well_ , then people’ll be queueing up to buy it!”

Justin folded his arms across his chest. “And just how do you expect to make money like that?” he asked. “People don’t just _give up_ something that still works!”

“That’s what updates are for,” said Tony, turning back to the blueprints again. There was a very strong tone of _duh_ in his voice that Justin didn’t care for.

“Now look,” he began, “who’s got the most experience out of the two of us, huh? Me, that’s who. I know what I’m talking about, kid. You should shut up and listen, maybe you’ll learn something.”

Tony scowled down at the table he was sat at. Then his expression cleared, and he perked up again. “I know!” he exclaimed, spinning to face Justin. “How about an experiment? We each try and sell, say, a thousand of our products over a six month period. Whoever gains the most positive feedback at the end of it wins!”

“Sounds more like a bet to me,” Justin informed him, then shrugged. “I’d hate to show up a poor little kid, but what the hell, I’m in. What are the terms of this bet?”

Now Tony rolled his eyes at the older man. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately, Justin realised. “Fine, whoever loses has to…” Tony had to stop and think for a moment. “Sit in on a business meeting with my dad!” he eventually finished, triumphantly. “Deal?”

Justin sighed, for form’s sake if nothing else. “Deal,” he agreed, and reached out to give Tony’s hand a brisk shake. He hoped Tony would learn something from that meeting.

After all, how could he _possibly_ lose this? He was Justin Hammer!


End file.
